In the article How to Write SEO Articles, it was mentioned that doing keyword research is an important step before writing articles for a blog or website. This keyword research serves to determine what keywords are suitable for use on your blog or website.
Choosing the right keywords is important because they will affect the performance of your blog or website in search results. Every blog or website writer must know what people often search for in search engines so they can find the right keywords for their blog or website.
Next, let's say you've found popular keywords related to your blog. You also have to know the competition map for these keywords. What is the level of difficulty to be in the first order of Google search results. What kind of articles are on the first page of search results.
The articles you write must appear on the first page of search results in order to bring in more readers. Research shows that 75 percent of searchers only open articles on the first page of search results.
Even better, your article is in the first position of Google search results because the first article gets 30 percent of clicks. While the second article gets 15 percent of clicks and the third article gets 10 percent of clicks (Source: Ahrefs).
By choosing the right keywords, it will be easier for your blog or website to be in the top ranking of search results.
What should you pay attention to in keyword research for this blog and website?
In general, there are four important components that must be considered in keyword research, namely search volume, keyword difficulty, keyword suggestion, and SERP.
1. Search Volume
Search volume or keyword search volume is how much a keyword is searched for on Google in a certain period of time. Usually the keyword tool will display many keyword searches in the last month.
For example, the search volume for a keyword shows 100,000. That is, the keyword is searched 100,000 times on Google within one month.
2. Keyword Difficulty (Keyword Difficulty Level)
Keyword difficulty shows the difficulty level of a keyword to be on the first page of search results. Generally, keyword tools use a scale of 0-100. The bigger the number, the more difficult it is for the keyword to reach the first position in search results.
Usually keyword difficulty also shows how many backlinks are needed so that an article can be on the first page of search results. The higher the keyword difficulty, the more backlinks needed. So this will make it difficult for you to carry out link building practices.
3. Keyword Suggestions
Keyword suggestions are keyword suggestions related to the keywords you are looking for. For example, you do keyword research for the keyword "blog", the keyword tool will provide keyword suggestions such as "how to create a blog", "create a blog for free", or "create a blog easily".
Generally, the keyword tool service will provide long tail keyword suggestions. What are long tail keywords? Long tail keywords are keywords that contain at least three or more words like the examples previously mentioned.
Through this keyword suggestion feature, you can find more long tail keywords that are suitable for your blog or website. Using long tail keywords is recommended in order to attract more visitors because 70 percent of searches on Google consist of long tail keywords.
For example, instead of just searching for the keyword "blog", users can get more complete and clear information by typing the keywords "how to create a blog" or "how to create a blog easily".
4. Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
The SERP shows the pages that rank top in the search results for the keyword you are researching. Its function is to see what quality the pages are that can rank at the top of Google search results.
What kind of keyword research can you do? There are many companies that provide keyword research services, both paid and free.
What is the best keyword research tool?
There are several tools that can help you do keyword research. Some of them are paid or free. Here are the tools:
1. Ubersuggests
Ubersuggest is a keyword tool owned by a well-known digital marketer, Neil Patel. You can use this keyword tool without paying a penny.
How to research keywords with Ubersuggest is also quite easy. You just need to type in what keywords you want to use and the areas you want to target. Ubersuggest will provide information about how much the keyword search volume is, the difficulty level of the keyword, and related keyword suggestions that can be used.
Apart from that, Ubersuggest will also provide keyword suggestions that are still related to the keywords you type in the search field. The suggestions given for the keyword “create a blog” are as follows:
Ubersuggest provides 941 keyword suggestions related to “blogs”. You can sort these keyword suggestions based on search volume, cost per click (CPC), or competition value (competition). For the example above we sorted the keyword suggestions from highest to lowest search volume.
2. Google Trends
Not only providing a search engine, Google also provides a tool for conducting keyword research, namely Google Trends. The good news is that the keyword tool service from Google is provided free of charge to its users.
You can set the region according to the country you are targeting. For this experiment, we used Google Trends Indonesia. Here are the results of our experiment with the keyword “blog”:
You will get a graph of the movement of the keywords you are looking for. Google Trends provides a graph of the movement of keywords from the last hour to the last five years. So you can see the rise and fall of the popularity of a keyword from time to time.
Like the previous method of keyword research, Google Trends also provides long tail keyword suggestions that are still related to what you are looking for in real time.
3. KWFinder
The third keyword tool is KWFinder. Similar to Uberseuggest, KWFinder provides information on search volume, keyword difficulty, and SERP of a keyword. We used the same keyword for the experiment, namely “blog”. You can see the results as above, but the keyword suggestions viewable in this experiment are limited.
The downside of KWFinder is that it's not completely free. You can only search for two keywords for free. To continue using, you must register as a member and you can do five keyword research every 24 hours with 50 keyword suggestions per search.
If a free account isn't enough, you can also buy the premium package. KWFinder provides three premium packages with different specifications. The cheapest premium package allows you to do keyword research up to 100 searches per 24 hours.
The most expensive plan allows you to do keyword research for up to 1200 searches per 24 hours. If these three packages cannot meet your needs, you can request a special package tailored to your needs.
4. MOZ
Furthermore, you can also use the MOZ keyword tool. To be able to use these MOZ features, you must first register as a member. After registering you will get 10 keyword research.
How to do keyword research with Moz is as follows:
- Open the Moz Keyword Explorer
- Register for an account or log in first
- After that, you can enter the keywords to be researched
- Wait a moment and the results will appear
From the picture above it can be seen how keyword research using a free account does not give maximum results. The results of this keyword research do not provide information on search volume per month. The SERP shown is also only up to the top three sites.
Of course the keyword research method as above cannot provide maximum results for your blog or website. You can take advantage of the 30-day Free Trial opportunity provided by MOZ. After 30 days, you will be billed 179 US Dollars per month.
5. SEMrush
SEMrush is a tool to assist Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies. Before using SEMrush, you must first register as a member which is available for free.
We conducted an experiment using the keyword “create a blog” and the results are as you can see above. You will get long tail keyword suggestions. In addition, you can also see which sites are on the first page of search results for these keywords.
Unfortunately, free account access at SEMrush is limited. You can't see all the keyword suggestions that are generated. SEMrush provides a trial version for 7 days and will be charged per month starting from 99 US Dollars.
6. Answer The Public
This keyword tool is not available in India. Answer The Public only provides several foreign language options, one of which is English. Even though it is only available in English, we recommend this method of keyword research because the keyword suggestions provided are quite complete and comprehensive.
You can do keyword research that you will use on your blog or website through this keyword tool. Answer The Public provides keyword suggestions in a 5W+1H format (What, Where, When, Why, Who, and How).
You can get ideas for blog or website content marketing from the results of this English keyword research. Maybe you will find keywords that have the potential to be popular if they are made in India. And most importantly you can use Answer The Public for free.
7. Soovle
The second keyword tool is Soovle. Different from the previous keyword tool, Soovle does not provide information on search volume, level of difficulty, and SERP. Soovle only provides popular long tail keyword suggestions on several major sites such as Google, Bing, Youtube, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, and Answer.com.
Another feature provided by Soovle is the Daily Top Keyword. However, unfortunately this top keyword only applies to English keywords. Soovle does not provide top keywords based on specific regions or languages.
8. Google Related Search
Apart from Google Trends, Google also provides other keyword research methods, namely related search. Every time you do a search with Google, the results provided do not only include articles with keywords typed. Google also provides long tail keyword suggestions related to the searched keywords in real time.
9. Keyword Shitters
The last free keyword tool is Keyword Shitter. How to research keywords using Keyword Shitter is quite simple. You only need to type in the keywords you want and Keyword Shitter will provide long tail keyword suggestions for those keywords.
How to Paid Keyword Research
Maybe the nine free keyword research services above can't meet your keyword research needs. If you need a more complete keyword research feature, the funds spent are certainly greater.
In the explanation earlier, we mentioned that in keyword research there are four aspects that need attention, namely Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty, Keyword Suggestion, and SERP. Actually, there is one more aspect to consider, namely Potential Traffic. Potential traffic is the potential traffic or visits that can be brought from a keyword.
Usually keywords with high search volume also have high potential traffic. However, in some cases keywords with high search volume can have low potential traffic.
For example, according to Ahrefs, the keyword "Google My Business" has a search volume of 32,000 searches per month with a traffic potential of 3,200. Actually, the potential for this traffic is quite large, but the majority of that traffic goes directly to the Google My Business site. Meanwhile, the portion of traffic that gets from other sites that discuss Google My Business is only in the dozens.
Even keywords with small search volume can have a large traffic potential. So, apart from search volume and keyword difficulty, you also need to consider the potential traffic you will get. Unfortunately, not many free services have the potential traffic feature and Ahrefs is one of the services that provides this feature.
This feature is useful for knowing the estimated traffic potential that can be obtained from a keyword. As previously explained, not all keywords with large search volumes have large traffic potential. On the other hand, keywords with small search volume can have quite high traffic potential.
Conclusion
The nine free keyword research sites above have their own advantages and disadvantages. There are some that are completely free and there are some that require you to register an account on the site.
To apply a good way to increase website traffic, you must understand what your keyword research needs are like. If you've had enough of keyword research that only provides long tail keyword suggestions, you can use Soovle, Google Related Search, Answer the Public, or Keyword Shitter.
However, if you also want to know the search volume, keyword difficulty, and SERP of a keyword you can use Ubersuggest, KWFinder, Google Trends, MOZ, or SEMRush. However, not all of them are available for free.
If knowing keyword suggestions and search volume is still not enough, you can use Ahrefs which can tell the traffic potential of a keyword. However, you need to spend quite a lot of money to get this feature.
Therefore, you also have to consider it from a financial perspective. If a free keyword research service can't meet your needs, there's nothing wrong with spending money to buy a premium account on one of these services. Each keyword research service provides various price options so you can choose a service package that suits your pocket.
If you have objections to paying, but need premium services, you can work around this by paying jointly with your friends. So you can enjoy premium services for a small fee.
This is an article on how to do keyword research for blogs and websites. Find the most appropriate keywords for your website and blog to increase website ranking in search results. The wrong choice of keywords will affect the popularity of your website and blog.